Marriage

Andrew Sullivan, in his blog, makes an intelligent conservative (Tory, in fact, since he draws on Oakeshott) argument about marriage. It is a sign of the times that one of the few rational conservatives is gay. It certainly says something about the way in which American conservatism has been galloping rightwards. The heart of Sullivan's argument is this (the picture is of Edmund Burke):

A conservative starts not from some a priori doctrine - i.e. that "marriage" is for procreation and child-rearing only. He starts from the society he lives in. What does marriage mean now? How has organic social change - the new equality of women, the emergence of openly gay people, the graying of the population, the availability of contraception - made our current arrangements anachronistic? The conservative will then set about - carefully and conservatively - reforming social institutions so that they adapt and coopt the new social realities.


The argument is certainly Burkean (it echoes Burke's argument about 'prejudice' in Reflections on the Revolution in France), and Oakeshottian (in that the concern is about preserving the values of the community).